Over 40? You can still join Philly PD

Marcia Gelbart

Posted:
Friday, July 31, 2009, 11:44 AM

You're never too old to be a police officer in Philadelphia - not any more.

City officials this morning scrapped an age cap of 40 for police recruits that was set in 2002 by then-Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson. The idea is to make it easier to attract police recruits, including MPOs who are certified by Pennsylvania and may have some degree of policing experience.

The action to eliminate the age cap, which took place at a meeting of the city's Administrative Board, was coupled with another vote that will allow the city to hire police officers at a salary level above that of police recruit, which is currently $40,036 a year.

Of course, given the fact that the city may face the prospect of having to lay off 1,000 police officers, as reported in today's Inquirer, the Administrative Board's actions may have no short-term impact.

The meeting, attended by Mayor Nutter, followed a briefing about the frightening budget ordeal that the mayor held in City Hall with regional business leaders.

Among the mayor's messages was to ask the business leaders to get on the phone, to email or otherwise reach out to state lawmakers they know to encourage them to support increasing Philadelphia's sales tax and changes to the city's pension fund. "Having a variety of city and subruban business leaders actively advocating with the General Assembly is an important part of this effort," Nutter said.

After the briefing, Comcast Corp. executive David L. Cohen said, "The takeaway is we need to reach out to our friends and our colleagues and the people we’ve developed relationships with and ask respectfully that it’s time, that the time has come to act on this."